addendum: looks like I quoted the wrong ref - answer was possibly 20173?

You can delete that folder to get rid of the files.
There should be a Crash Reports/crashreporter.ini that has the setting to submit crash reports.

This setting under [Crash Reporter] should suppress crash reports.

SubmitReport=0

Set the Integer pref browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to 0 on the about:config page to get the about:sessionrestore page immediately with the first restart after a crash has occurred or the Task Manager was used to close Firefox.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

Thanks for the advice. I got rid of the pending crash reports using [with considerable care!] using, in a Terminal:

~/.mozilla/firefox/Crash\ Reports/pending$ rm *.*

From what you say ~/.mozilla/firefox/Crash\ Reports/rm -r pending would be quicker and not damage Firefox. HOWEVER I am not sure how resetting: browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to 0 , will stop the problem which I believe is a bug in the firefox program that generates these Crash Reports. Please set me right OR, how do I stop the crashes?

If you set browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to 0 (zero) then you will be notified of all crashes and at least you know that Firefox has crashed. Otherwise Firefox tries to restart automatically and you may not be aware that a crash has occurred.

Does Firefox send a crash report if you remove all files from the Crash Reports folder except the crashreporter.ini file?

I have reset browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to 0 (zero) and purged ~/.mozilla/firefox/Crash\ Reports/ of everything [inc 'pending'] except 'crashreporter.ini'. Nothing's happened so far! Which might be good. Is there a way of finding and eradicating the Plug-in bug [as I understand it] that causes Firefox the problem? The files in 'pending' seemed to mention something called 'libflashplayer.so' - might that be an issue? [its not mentioned in Tools> Plugins]

thanks

The libflashplayer.so file is the Adobe Flash player.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Flash#Troubleshooting

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Issues_related_to_plugins#

I'll look at those links in a mo, thanks. I just looked [11/12/12 1800] and despite having reset [browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to 0 (zero) and purged ~/.mozilla/firefox/Crash\ Reports/ of everything [inc 'pending'] except 'crashreporter.ini'.] as reported above, now ~\...\pending has reappeared & contains 1922 'items' eating 85.2MB. A sample 'report' says:

EMCheckCompatibility=true
ProductName=Firefox
Vendor=Mozilla
InstallTime=1355166685
Theme=classic/1.0
Notes=OpenGL: DRI R300 Project -- Mesa DRI R300 (R300 4144) 20090101 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE TCL DRI2 -- 1.5 Mesa 7.7.1 -- texture_from_pixmap\n
Version=17.0.1
ReleaseChannel=release
ServerURL=https://crash-reports.mozilla.com/submit?id={ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}&version=17.0.1&buildid=20121129170341
Add-ons=langpack-en-ZA%40firefox.mozilla.org:17.0.1,langpack-en-GB%40firefox.mozilla.org:17.0.1,ubufox%40ubuntu.com:2.6,%7B972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd%7D:17.0.1
BuildID=20121129170341
ProductID={ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}
CrashTime=1355245606
StartupTime=1355245606
ProcessType=plugin
PluginVersion=
PluginName=
PluginFilename=libflashplayer.so

This plainly cannot continue.

What happens if I 'disable' all the plug-ins?